Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (50th Anniversary edition). New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1962, 2002.
Summary: This classic of environmental writing made the case that pesticides were rendering harm to just about everything in the American landscape, including human beings, except for the pests targeted by these chemical poisons.
I grew up in the era when pesticide use was far more common than at present. I probably carry DDT and a host of other chemicals in my fatty tissue, though far less than would otherwise have been the case because of Rachel Carson’s landmark 1962 work. Carson was a trained marine biologist who became a science writer winning a National Book award for her 1951 best seller The Sea Around Us. In high school, we celebrated the first Earth Day and read an excerpt of her work. But I never read the work in its entirety until now.
The book is…
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